# N05_E18 Great Lakes pilot: 1802–1907 survey, boundary, and map crosswalk

**Research date:** 2026-08-10 UTC  
**Sector:** `N05_E18` — canonical 24 × 24 grid cell, 37.5–45.0° N and 270–285° E (90–75° W)  
**Anchor:** Merrillville, Indiana, approximately 41.4828° N, 87.3327° W  
**Time band:** `1800-1950` industrial transition, with a 1907 map anchor  
**Status:** bounded survey/boundary/map source crosswalk; no derived score and no `provisional_quadrant`

## Selected unresolved path

The preceding N05_E18 treaty notes established dated legal text and scan provenance for the 1803–1805 Fort Wayne, Fort Industry, and Grouseland instruments, but did not establish surveyed geometry or implementation. This run follows the SOP path of pairing historical legal geography with survey records, maps, and a modern machine-readable spatial anchor. It does not claim that catalog metadata or a secondary reconstruction is equivalent to an inspected treaty map, field book, boundary monument, or fixed-cell polygon.

## Spatial and evidence boundary

The fixed cell is a broad mixed land/water sector. Fort Wayne, the Greenville Treaty Line, the Wabash/Vincennes tract, and Allen County are regional or neighboring reference areas whose source footprints may cross several historical and modern boundaries. No source inspected in this run supplies a georeferenced treaty or survey polygon clipped to `N05_E18`. Historical place, county, treaty, and survey boundaries are therefore retained as source footprints rather than silently reassigned to the canonical cell.

## Raw observations — historical survey and boundary evidence

### A. Thomas Freeman survey reconstruction, 1802–1804

- **Source:** Thomas Jandebeur, “Thomas Freeman in Indiana Territory: A Research Essay on the Fort Wayne Surveys (1802) and the Vincennes Tract Boundary Survey (1803–1804),” *Indiana Magazine of History* 118 (September 2022), DOI `10.2979/indimagahist.118.3.01`. The article was retrieved as a 37-page PDF and read directly; relevant printed/article pages are identified below.
- **Article pages 166–168:** the abstract and introduction state that, under Henry Dearborn and William Henry Harrison, Thomas Freeman surveyed two tracts at or near Fort Wayne specified by the 1795 Treaty of Greenville and the boundary of the Vincennes Tract specified by the 1803 Treaty of Fort Wayne. The article identifies the historical literature’s disagreement about dates and sequence.
- **Article pp. 168–169:** the author reports that a handwritten transcript held by the Indiana State Archives is the principal surviving starting point for the Vincennes Tract survey notes, while Freeman’s original field notes have not been located. This is a source-status observation, not evidence that the field work did not occur.
- **Article pp. 172–176:** the article reproduces or discusses the legal-geographic descriptions leading to Treaty of Fort Wayne Article 1, including Point Coupee, the Wabash, White River, a 72-mile cross-Wabash line, and the Vincennes tract. It also records the 1802–1803 correspondence and negotiation context.
- **Article pp. 176–178:** the author cites Henry Dearborn’s June 1802 instructions for Freeman to survey a six-mile-square tract around Fort Wayne and a two-mile-square tract at the Wabash end of the portage from the Miami of the Lake. The article states that an “A Map of the Reservations at Fort Wayne,” copied by Charles de Krafft and held in National Archives records, is annotated “Survey’d June 1803, by Thos Freeman.”
- **Article pp. 179–183:** the article describes the Indiana State Archives transcript titled “Thomas Freeman’s Survey of the Boundary Line of the Vincennes Tract 1803,” explains that its notes are not arranged chronologically, and reconstructs a likely 1803–1804 sequence. The article explicitly characterizes this as a critical reconstruction and notes date ambiguity in the transcript.
- **Evidence type:** scholarly secondary reconstruction grounded in cited correspondence, archival survey records, and map references. It is not a direct extraction from the cited NARA map or Indiana State Archives transcript. The article’s summary reports that the Vincennes Tract boundary survey began February 8, 1803, resumed September 17, 1803 after interruption, and was completed in mid-July 1804; that chronology remains the author’s reconstruction where the underlying transcript is not independently inspected.
- **Confidence:** high for the article’s claims, citations, and page references; medium for the reconstructed chronology and any inferred sequence; unresolved for direct map geometry and field-note transcription because those primary objects were not inspected here.
- **Independent National Archives finding-aid check:** the National Archives *Special List 19: General Land Office Maps* separately catalogs “A Map of the Reservations at Fort Wayne,” surveyed June 1803 by Thomas Freeman and copied by Charles de Krafft, as a manuscript map on paper at 1 inch to 150 perches, 19 1/2 × 33 1/2 inches, including a description of soil and timber. The same finding aid catalogs “A Map of [the boundaries of] the Vincennes Tract on the Wabash (in Indiana and Illinois),” surveyed September 1803 by Freeman and copied by de Krafft, at 1 inch to 3 miles, 23 1/2 × 31 inches. These are catalog-level primary-record descriptions; the map images themselves were not inspected.
- **Evidence type:** authoritative archival finding-aid description corroborating the existence, scale, medium, dimensions, and descriptive scope of the two map objects; not a substitute for visual map extraction.
- **Confidence:** high for the finding-aid metadata; unresolved for plotted lines, labels, monuments, and fixed-cell geometry until the primary map images are inspected.

### B. Primary NARA map-catalog record and General Land Office map list, 1803

- **NARA Special List 19, pp. 58–59 / PDF lines 2470–2480:** the General Land Office cartographic list identifies “A Map of the Reservations at Fort Wayne. Surveyed June 1803, by Thos. Freeman,” copied by Charles de Kraft, manuscript on paper, scale 1 inch to 150 perches, dimensions 19 1/2 × 33 1/2 inches, with a description of soil and timber. The same list identifies “A Map of [the boundaries of] the Vincennes Tract on the Wabash (in Indiana and Illinois),” surveyed September 1803 by Thomas Freeman and copied by Charles de Kraft, manuscript on paper, scale 1 inch to 3 miles, dimensions 23 1/2 × 31 inches.
- **Evidence status:** this is a primary-record catalog/list description, stronger than the earlier article-only citation for map title, date, scale, dimensions, and stated contents. The map images themselves were not retrieved or inspected; no boundary line, soil class, timber observation, or fixed-cell polygon is adopted from the list.
- **Confidence:** high for the catalog/list wording and map metadata; unresolved for the actual map content, georeferencing, and relation to `N05_E18`.

### C. Greenville Treaty Line and reserved-passage context, 1795–1800s

- **Source:** William Rusk Kinder, *Historic Notes of Miami County*, Internet Archive item `historicnotesofm00kind`, PDF `historicnotesofm00kind.pdf`.
- **Printed p. 93:** the source describes the line agreed at Greenville as the “Greenville Treaty Line or Indian Boundary line,” says it later functioned as a dividing line between survey systems and counties, and states that the line separated territory open for settlement south and east from Indian-held territory north and west. This is the source’s historical narrative and terminology, not a modern legal or geospatial determination.
- **Printed pp. 93–94:** the source reports that the Treaty of Greenville left certain forts and posts in Indian territory and lists reserved tracts, including a reservation at Lake Michigan identified in the narrative with the site of Chicago. It also describes free passage by land and water among named forts and waterways. The observation is relevant to regional route and reservation context but does not locate a parcel inside `N05_E18`.
- **Printed pp. 95–96:** the source connects the Greenville line to the creation of Indiana Territory in 1800 and to changing territorial county boundaries. The text is a later regional historical synthesis and may reflect the author’s framing; it requires comparison with treaty text, surveys, and administrative records.
- **Evidence type:** digitized historical secondary source, OCR checked against the downloaded PDF text for the cited printed-page passages. No map plate was extracted in this run.
- **Confidence:** medium for the bounded narrative and printed-page location; lower for any exact line geometry, because the cited passages are prose and the source was not treated as a survey plat.

### D. Allen County landownership map anchor, 1907

- **Source:** Library of Congress, *Plat book of Allen County, Indiana*, Allen County Map Co., 1907, LCCN `2007626866`, item JSON and IIIF manifest.
- **Machine-readable catalog fields:** title `Plat book of Allen County, Indiana`; publication `Fort Wayne, Ind. : Allen County Map Co., 1907`; location `Indiana--Allen County`; medium `1 atlas ([2], 5–45 p.) : hand col. maps ; 46 cm`; call number `G1403.A4 A4 1907`; repository Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.
- **Resource metadata:** the LOC JSON exposes a 24-file image resource with JP2, TIFF, GIF, and IIIF JPEG paths and a page-level `resource/g4093am.gla00045/` route. The catalog record states that the atlas includes an index and that the digitized copy is available as raster images.
- **Inspection status:** catalog metadata and reproducible image paths were inspected; the map plates themselves were not visually inspected or georeferenced in this run. No landowner, road, stream, township, or parcel observation is adopted from the uninspected images.
- **Evidence type:** authoritative machine-readable catalog metadata for a digitized historical map atlas; not yet an extracted map observation.
- **Confidence:** high for title, date, geographic scope, item identifier, and available image paths; unresolved for plate content, exact page coverage, and relation to the fixed cell until the relevant sheets are inspected.

## Raw observations — modern machine-readable bridge

### E. USGS NLDI point-to-reach crosswalk at the Merrillville anchor

- **Query:** `POINT(-87.3327 41.4828)` against the USGS Network Linked Data Index hydrolocation endpoint.
- **Returned indexed feature:** approximately `(-87.33393740603242, 41.48243980835267)`; COMID `3399712`; reach code `04040001000480`; measure `10.873528411319496`; source `indexed`; source name `Automatically indexed by the NLDI`.
- **Returned supplied point:** `(-87.3327, 41.4828)`, source `provided`.
- **Retrieval date:** 2026-08-10 UTC.
- **Evidence type:** current machine-readable point/reach relationship. It is not evidence of historical treaty boundaries, route continuity, land tenure, or cell-wide hydrology.
- **Confidence:** high for the API response fields and retrieval; medium for using a single anchor as a representative of a 24 × 24 cell; not comparable directly with the historical treaty and survey descriptions.

### F. USGS historical-topographic catalog search status

- **Search envelope:** TNMAccess API query for `Historical Topographic Map` intersecting a small bounding box around the Merrillville anchor, `-87.5,41.3,-87.2,41.6`, with `max=50`.
- **Returned status:** `total: 0`, no items, no API errors; the service returned a generated ScienceBase query URL and a message that no items were returned for the query.
- **Interpretation:** this is a bounded search-status observation only. It may reflect dataset tagging, query syntax, coverage, or endpoint behavior. It does not mean that no historical topographic maps exist for the area, and it is not converted to zero map coverage.
- **Next action:** use the USGS topoView/TNM interface or corrected product dataset/filter, then preserve product identifiers and map sheets after retrieval; do not infer absence from this API response.
- **Confidence:** high for the recorded API response; unresolved for historical map availability under this query.

## Source interpretation

1. The survey reconstruction strengthens the historical record by identifying a dated 1802–1804 survey program, the Fort Wayne reservation-map path, the Indiana State Archives transcript path, and explicit chronology uncertainty. It does not substitute a secondary reconstruction for the primary map or field book.
2. The NARA/GLO list supplies primary-record catalog metadata for two Freeman maps, including scales and dimensions, but not their visual contents.
3. The Greenville Line account supports a bounded observation that treaty-era legal geography was later used in territorial and county boundary narratives and that reserved passage and post/portage contexts mattered to regional connectivity. It does not supply a fixed-cell polygon.
4. The 1907 Allen County atlas is a reproducible map source with machine-readable catalog and IIIF metadata. Its usefulness for `N05_E18` remains prospective until sheets are visually inspected and their geographic extent is documented.
5. The modern NLDI record provides a current hydrologic-network anchor at the human reference point. Shared geographic proximity between the NLDI reach and historical waterways is not proof of continuity.
6. Together, the sources support a stronger research path from treaty text to survey records to historical mapping to a current network anchor, while preserving distinct source categories and uncertainty.

## Geography and variable crosswalk

| Historical observation | Modern counterpart | Relation | Limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Greenville Treaty Line prose and territorial boundary narrative | Fixed 24 × 24 cell geometry | related, not equivalent | No georeferenced line or polygon extracted |
| Fort Wayne reservation survey references | Current NLDI anchor/reach | related, not equivalent | Different feature type, period, and spatial scale |
| 1907 Allen County plat-book catalog | Current GIS/parcel/network layers | related, not equivalent | Plates not inspected; catalog metadata is not parcel data |
| Treaty/survey route and boundary instructions | Current hydrologic network | not comparable without reconstruction | Names and proximity do not establish route continuity |

## Derived layer

No numerical sector score was derived. No parcel area, treaty cession area, route length, settlement density, water constraint, energy constraint, adaptive-capacity indicator, or formula output was calculated.

The bounded derivation is an evidence-chain status result:

```text
1802–1804 survey reconstruction
        + Greenville Line/reserved-passage narrative
        + 1907 map-atlas metadata and image path
        + current NLDI point/reach anchor
        -> better-defined historical-to-modern search path
           with primary-map, plate, and fixed-cell geometry gaps retained
```

This is not a measurement and not a model score.

## Model classification

- `provisional_quadrant`: `unresolved`
- **Reason:** the cited survey transcript and map images were not directly inspected, the 1907 plates were not extracted, the historical line and treaty parcels were not georeferenced to `N05_E18`, and the pilot’s comparable raw constraint/adaptive-capacity tables remain incomplete.
- **Model boundary:** `provisional_quadrant` is a model output and is not an archival fact.

## Missingness and uncertainty

- `primary_survey_object_not_inspected`: the NARA map images and Indiana State Archives transcript were not retrieved for visual extraction, although NARA *Special List 19* independently confirms catalog-level descriptions for the two Freeman map objects.
- `historical_map_plate_not_inspected`: the LOC atlas metadata and IIIF paths were retrieved, but no plate content was adopted.
- `historical_topo_query_no_items`: the bounded TNMAccess query returned no items; this is a search-status result, not zero map coverage.
- `fixed_cell_geometry_unresolved`: no historical boundary or route was transformed into the canonical cell.
- `geographic_match_uncertain`: Fort Wayne, Vincennes, the Greenville Line, Allen County, and the Merrillville anchor are not identical source footprints.
- `period_match_uncertain`: 1802–1804 and 1907 are dated anchors within broad SOP bands, not continuous period records.
- `historical_measure_not_available`: no comparable cell-wide treaty-era survey, population, land-use, route, water, or energy measure was extracted.
- `not_applicable`: no numerical score or quadrant formula was attempted.

No archival silence, inaccessible primary object, or empty catalog query has been converted into zero.

## Next search path

1. Retrieve and visually inspect the NARA “A Map of the Reservations at Fort Wayne,” NAID `191671698`, and the NARA-cataloged Vincennes Tract map; locate the Indiana State Archives transcript or a verified reproduction of “Thomas Freeman’s Survey of the Boundary Line of the Vincennes Tract 1803.”
2. Compare the Fort Wayne map and transcript against Treaty of Greenville Article 3 reservations and Treaty of Fort Wayne Article 1/related provisions; preserve line, bearing, and boundary uncertainty.
3. Retrieve and inspect the relevant 1907 Allen County atlas sheets through the LOC IIIF manifest, recording page/image numbers, named features, sheet extent, and any relationship to the fixed cell.
4. Re-run the USGS historical-topographic search using the documented topoView/TNM access path and preserve product identifiers; treat unsuccessful queries as `searched_no_result` only for that query envelope.
5. Build a georeferenced crosswalk for the Greenville Line, Fort Wayne tract, relevant historic routes, and `N05_E18`, with explicit uncertainty rather than a hard boundary where the sources do not support one.
6. Continue the separate modern baseline through machine-readable water, population, energy, infrastructure, and remediation datasets; do not use the historical crosswalk as a substitute for cell-wide modern extraction.

## Provenance register

| Evidence | Tier | Identifier / page or item scope | Date accessed | URL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freeman survey reconstruction | B: scholarly institutional record | Jandebeur, *Indiana Magazine of History* 118 (2022), article pp. 166–183; DOI `10.2979/indimagahist.118.3.01` | 2026-08-10 | <https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/download/40367/42485/107643> |
| Fort Wayne reservation map | A: primary catalog/list description, map not directly inspected | NARA General Land Office Special List 19, p. 58; “A Map of the Reservations at Fort Wayne,” June 1803; scale 1 inch to 150 perches; 19 1/2 × 33 1/2 in.; map includes soil/timber description | 2026-08-10 | <https://www.archives.gov/files/research/cartographic/special-list-19-general-land-office.pdf> |
| Vincennes Tract map | A: primary catalog/list description, map not directly inspected | NARA General Land Office Special List 19, p. 58; “A Map of [the boundaries of] the Vincennes Tract on the Wabash,” surveyed September 1803; scale 1 inch to 3 miles; 23 1/2 × 31 in. | 2026-08-10 | <https://www.archives.gov/files/research/cartographic/special-list-19-general-land-office.pdf> |
| Indiana State Archives survey transcript path | A/B: cited archival record, not directly inspected | “Thomas Freeman’s Survey of the Boundary Line of the Vincennes Tract 1803,” Indiana I; citation preserved through Jandebeur article pp. 168, 179–183 | 2026-08-10 | <https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/download/40367/42485/107643> |
| Greenville Treaty Line narrative | C: digitized historical source | Kinder, *Historic Notes of Miami County*, printed pp. 93–96; Internet Archive item `historicnotesofm00kind` | 2026-08-10 | <https://archive.org/details/historicnotesofm00kind> |
| 1907 Allen County plat book catalog | A: authoritative machine-readable catalog | LOC LCCN `2007626866`; 24 image resources; IIIF manifest | 2026-08-10 | <https://www.loc.gov/item/2007626866/?fo=json> |
| 1907 Allen County plat-book image resource | A: digitized map resource | `g4093am.gla00045`; resource and page-image paths exposed in LOC JSON | 2026-08-10 | <https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4093am.gla00045/> |
| Current NLDI anchor crosswalk | A: authoritative machine-readable API | `POINT(-87.3327 41.4828)`; COMID `3399712`; reach `04040001000480`; measure `10.873528411319496` | 2026-08-10 | <https://api.water.usgs.gov/nldi/linked-data/hydrolocation?coords=POINT(-87.3327%2041.4828)> |
| USGS historical-topographic search status | A: authoritative API response | TNMAccess bounding-box query; `total: 0`, no items returned | 2026-08-10 | <https://tnmaccess.nationalmap.gov/api/v1/products?datasets=Historical%20Topographic%20Map&bbox=-87.5,41.3,-87.2,41.6&max=50&outputFormat=json> |
| NARA General Land Office map finding aid | A: authoritative archival finding aid | *Special List 19*, entries for the Fort Wayne reservations map and Vincennes Tract map; dimensions, scales, medium, and descriptive notes | 2026-08-10 | <https://www.archives.gov/files/research/cartographic/special-list-19-general-land-office.pdf> |

## Bottom line

This run adds a bounded 1802–1907 survey, boundary, and map crosswalk for `N05_E18`. It identifies a scholarly reconstruction of the 1802–1804 Thomas Freeman survey program, an independently retrieved National Archives finding-aid description of the Fort Wayne and Vincennes Tract map objects, a page-located Archive.org account of Greenville Treaty Line and reserved-passage context, a reproducible 1907 Allen County plat-book catalog and IIIF path, and a refreshed current USGS NLDI anchor. The evidence chain is stronger, but the Fort Wayne and Vincennes Tract map images, survey transcript, and LOC plates remain uninspected; treaty/survey geometry, implementation history, archaeological corroboration, cell-wide measures, derived scores, and `provisional_quadrant` remain unresolved.